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I think about my oldest brothers, Virl and Tom, and what a responsibility they must have felt toward seven younger siblings. My parents had expectations of them that I’m certain were more stringent than what Donny, Jimmy, and I experienced. My parents were more at ease with their approach to parenting with the younger set. And let’s face it: They were older, too. After the first four kids, you get weary—I know. I get it! The day-to-day routines and self-expectations that all seemed so important with the older children get reprioritized according to your energy supply. There’s no doubt that the way I raised my older children is different from the way I am raising my younger four. When in typical teenage fashion, Jessica first started to claim her individuality and push back against the
way I thought she should behave, I took it very personally. Now when some prickly, mood-swing behavior bursts out of one of my teenagers, I almost smile about it.

When Jessica was going through her rebellious teenage years, I was convinced she needed a good counselor to straighten out her thinking. (I still think this is a good idea for both children and parents, to have someone who can serve as “referee” when they reach a communication impasse.) I was bewildered that my own daughter was making some irresponsible choices because I would never have “done that to my parents.” I couldn’t believe she wouldn’t even listen to me; I thought I could spare her so much heartache.

I can understand now that she felt her lapses into poor judgment paled in comparison with her mother’s choice to stay married when she perceived that I was not happy. I sought out a counselor for us both to see, thinking that it would straighten out Jessica’s thinking. It was humbling to hear that it was my thinking that needed an adjustment first.

One afternoon, I went to a follow-up session to talk about the widening gap between my daughter and myself. I was at a loss for what to do. I remember shedding a few tears while I explained to the counselor, “My daughter acts like she can’t stand to be around me! I love her to pieces. She thinks I wasn’t there for her. It blows me away! I’ve always taken my kids on the road with me for all of my shows. I’ve been home as much as I could be, but as an entertainer, I work in the evenings. Why can’t she see that I’m trying to support the family?”

The counselor listened politely and then said something
that took me by surprise in its straightforwardness. It even put me off a bit, until I recognized the truth in his words.

“She’s a child. You’re the adult. Or are you? Picture your daughter as the top of a pyramid. If there is trouble with the child who is at the top, then you have to start looking at the lower levels of the pyramid to see where the problems are coming from—family dynamics, sibling rivalry, your marriage, or even each parent individually. So, take a look at what you are doing that is sending your daughter mixed messages. You’re not her friend. You’re her parent. She doesn’t have to like you right now. She just has to respect you.”

I remember sitting there, speechless. I couldn’t imagine having a child that I loved so much and so deeply not even like me back. For a moment, my defensive voice roared inside my head, and I sought to justify my position to the counselor, who didn’t seem to comprehend the pain I was in. “You have no idea what a mother’s love is about! I’m here to heal my relationship with my daughter, and you’re saying it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t like me?” Once my thinking calmed down, after about ten minutes of feeling misunderstood, my heart was able to speak up. “I think he’s right. It’s almost impossible to love what you don’t respect. My daughter needs to respect me first as her mother.” It took me a while longer to learn that attempting to justify my position as a parent usually means that my thinking is off base or even incorrect, because hurt pride has replaced true reasoning.

When I looked at myself, and my expectations for her, more closely, I realized that I didn’t parent Jessica properly. I wanted
her to be my buddy, my friend. I couldn’t stand it that she didn’t like me. Being a very smart child, she used it to open my eyes to “seeing” the truth I so adamantly avoided.

As I was driving home from that appointment, I thought about another time when seeing things the way others did gave me a new perspective. It happened while touring in Asia with my family when I was a young girl. We were doing a weekend of shows in Bangkok, when the tour manager came up with the idea to give each person in the band and crew a disposable camera on a Saturday morning. We were all given the same instructions. Go out and take pictures of whatever really captures your attention. At the end of the day, all of the cameras were collected and taken to a photo-processing place. (This was before the digital age; you couldn’t “tweet” a photo and have it flash around the world. The hippest you could get in the 1970s was a slide projector—and once the lights were dimmed and the fan on the projector began to whirl, everyone in the room would fall asleep!) When the envelopes of photos came back, each person was asked to tape his favorite photos to the backstage wall before the show. It was a fascinating photo editorial of one day from many different perspectives. Some people had taken pictures of clogged city traffic, others of flowering garden walls. There were photos showing street signs, mothers carrying babies, broken-down bicycles, and destitute men on street corners begging for change. There were pictures of lavish temples and cardboard boxes that served as homes to some of the extremely poor, trays full of fish, and trees with colorful flags hanging from them. One of our band members had even taken a
picture of some young boy who decided to pee on the American’s foot! It was really the first time that I understood how many vastly different points of view individual people can have in the same city, during the same hours of the same day. Even more interesting was that each person thought he had captured the essence of the city best.

I also took the time to think about my own teenage years and how I had felt about my own mother. I occasionally felt hurt that my mother wasn’t there for me. I would have long days of rehearsal for the original
Donny & Marie
show surrounded by people who were giving me advice on everything from hairstyles to dance steps to script changes to press photos. Many days I just wanted Mom to be there, at the studio, to guide me in every decision, help me learn my lines, or listen to me when the frustration got to be too much. But even then, I knew it was impossible for her to be there every day, eighteen hours a day, just for me. She had a home to run, businesses to look after, and eight other children who all needed her, too. There are many journal writings by my mother that expressed her frustration at the limitations on her time, like this one from September of 1976:
“I got up at 5:00 this morning to get a head start. I folded some clothes; cooked breakfast…and then the panic began. Jimmy’s suitcase had been lost, so I had to shorten a pair of pants that he could wear for the taping. We barely made it in time. I’m sitting on the bus (the dressing room at this studio) at KTLA right now watching Donny and Marie on the TV monitor. They’re rehearsing an ice-skating segment with Peggy Fleming. I’m doing bookwork at the same
time…new files, banked checks, paid bills, made reports. I feel so rewarded I don’t know how to act! I wish I could be in two places at the same time. I know my efforts could be utilized by each of my kids. I would like to see everything be successful and everyone be happy and have plenty to get along with. Then I’d be happy.”
It wasn’t until I was married and had my first child that I understood all of the time and energy constraints on a workingwoman who is also a mother. And of course every mother is a workingwoman! You could simply replace the words my mother wrote with your own personal life experience and the frustration is the same for all of us. Once a mother has children, her heart will always be like the ocean, wanting to fill any space where there is a hole, to restore the equilibrium, to make everything equal and fair for every child. As she taught me and I believe with all my heart, “A mother is only as happy as her
least happy
child.”

After speaking with that counselor, I had a breakthrough moment of realizing that Jessica’s view that I wasn’t there for her was
her reality
. It didn’t matter how many birthday parties I threw, or how many times I picked her up for lunch from junior high, or how many mother-daughter trips we took, or how often I sat in the bleachers of her sports events; she believed that I was not there for her in her young life. I can understand now why she thought I wasn’t there for her, because in reality, I wasn’t even there for
myself
. My honest emotions had been buried so deep in trying to be a good mother and keep our family together.

At age seventeen, Jessica told me that she felt she was gay.
She didn’t apologize or explain. She just said that she wanted me to know.

Even though I have grown up around many, many gay people in my show business life, and have been friends with them for years and years, it really wasn’t something I was expecting to hear from one of my own children. From what I understand, I’m not alone in feeling unprepared for this news. I can’t tell you that I didn’t cry about it later, because I did. The gay people in my life have told me of the challenges that they have faced simply because they are gay, from bullying to tough workplace discrimination to feeling isolated from social events to legal issues when it came to medical and financial decisions to outright rejection by family members, friends, and even the neighborhoods they live in. I couldn’t help but feel saddened at the thought that my daughter might go through similar hardships.

Jessica has suffered from a few broken hearts from what she herself called bad-choice relationships, but many of us have been through the same thing. It seems to be part of the process of figuring out who you are and what your own standards are. She expressed her personality at the time by getting lip piercings and various tattoos. It makes me sad to have any of my babies alter the skin that I think is so perfect, but she was old enough to make that choice. Also, it seemed that everyone was getting tattoos, from rock stars to schoolteachers. It was no longer seen as something radical for a woman to do.

Her younger brother Brandon has always related well to Jessica. He shares her sense of humor, they like the same TV
shows, and he always loves whatever clothes Jes picks out for him as birthday or Christmas gifts. Now that she is in her midtwenties, it’s wonderful to hear the way she is able to share with him the life experiences that have caused her pain, in hopes that he will avoid them for himself. When Jessica visited to help me get ready for my wedding to Steve, she gave Brandon the type of insight that I now have the time and wisdom to know he probably can’t hear from me, as his mother. He was describing to her the tattoo that he couldn’t wait to get when he was eighteen. I think Jessica’s response surprised him. She told him, “Tattoos give you a stereotype before you even speak. It’s like wearing a sign. Unfortunately, people judge you based on your look, so it’s really hard to get certain types of jobs when you have tattoos that are visible. It might not be worth it, bud.” Jessica now wants to go through the process of having most of her tattoos removed by laser, which is time-consuming and costly, which shows me that she’s serious about not wanting them to represent who she is now.

In the fall of 2011, Jessica told me that she wanted to apply for acceptance into the police academy to train to eventually become a police officer. She had decided that her long-term goal was to work with teenagers who were in trouble. I am impressed that my daughter has made her own past troubles into a resource to be used as a bridge to help kids in the future.

Since Jessica chooses to live her life as an “out” gay woman, I’ve stood by her as a mom who loves her unconditionally. I was fortunate to have a mother who loved each of us unconditionally. I think somewhere in my sweet mother’s heart, she
knew that Jessica would stand apart from the other grandchildren, at least for a while. My mom’s devotion to making sure Jessica knew she was a wonderful girl and loved unconditionally is inspirational for anyone.

Whenever the media has asked me about Jessica’s adult life, I always answer that if she ever wants to talk about her personal life, then she will. I grew up in a business where people were always telling me what to do and what to say; I’m not about to do that to my own child. I only want to be there for her. And I hope she knows for certain that I am there for her, always.

Many people have e-mailed me or approached me to thank me for helping them communicate with a family member who is gay. Other times it’s a person who wants a bit of encouragement to talk to their family about being gay themselves. I don’t feel I have any special wisdom to share! All I can say is that, as a Christian, my understanding of God is that we are each created as one of His own children. I think we need to step back from labeling any of God’s children. I certainly don’t want my own children labeled and judged with any negative stereotypes about groups of people, because stereotypes never take the individual into account. Being gay is how my daughter perceives her reality. I think all of us can share our thoughts and expand our own thinking, but I don’t think we should deny what a person feels is his or her reality.

My mother would tell me,
“Father in Heaven has a relationship with each of His children and there is probably a great counseling place in Heaven where we can one day figure
out everything we experienced here in this earth school. In the meantime, let’s all love each other. Love is the power that unlocks the door to everything. Love is the key.”

I love my daughter with the same fierce love that I have for my other children. I know this is how Heavenly Father loves us, no matter what circumstances we create for ourselves or have even been put into without choice.

Every day I have to leave the house at about five forty-five to do the
Donny & Marie Show
at the Flamingo. For six months of the year, I commute to Los Angeles every weekday to tape two
Marie
Hallmark talk shows. My younger kids now have their dad, Steve, who helps them through their homework, oversees their chores, picks them up from their activities, talks to them about their problems and accomplishments, and gathers them in the living room for evening Scripture reading and prayers before bedtime. I adore his dedication to being a responsible, loving father. I honor that he looks over each child as if he had done so from the day of their birth. When the younger kids have days off, I take them to LA with me when I’m taping the talk show, and almost every Friday and Saturday night, one of them comes with me to the Flamingo to be with me in my dressing room. However, I imagine that in three or four years a couple of them might say, “You were never there for me, Mom.” I’ll have to accept that as their truth, no matter how much it is based in reality, or not.