Chynna Phillips, daughter of The Mamas & The Papas singer John Phillips, shared a significant conversation with her father on the eve of her wedding in 1995, where he revealed shocking information to her.
The confession, driven by his role in giving her away at the wedding, left her emotional but she found the discussion invaluable.
“We talked about stuff that was pretty earth-shattering and a lot had come to the surface and my father was having a ton of feelings and, of course, that made me have a ton of feelings and I remember I was up all night just weeping and [felt] numb as well,” Phillips said.
The moment was described as life-changing for her.
“I would weep and then I would go stoic again and then I would weep and then I would go stoic again, and it was because my father had just revealed some really big information to me and I just felt blindsided by it.”
“I know it sounds horrible that my dad would do that to me on the night before my wedding, but he didn’t intend to do that, it was more like it just evolved in our conversation the night before I got married,” she said.
Phillips also discussed her father’s troubled past, including allegations made by her half-sister Mackenzie Phillips of a consensual relationship with their father.
“And I don’t think it was any coincidence that he was walking me down the aisle with my mother, and I think he felt like he needed to come clean before he walked me down the aisle for his own conscience. I felt that he felt that he needed to do that just so that it was genuine.”
“At the same time it was one of the most priceless conversations I’d ever had with my father and it was definitely, bar none, the most honest conversation I’d had with my father, and the most raw and real conversation I’d ever had with my dad,” she said.
Despite ongoing conflicting feelings towards her father, she emphasized the complexity of forgiveness.
She and her husband, Billy Baldwin, have faced challenges in their marriage but worked through them, with a recent acknowledgment of a six-month separation period.
“You know it’s easy to say, I forgive you’… but the truth is is that forgiveness takes time, it’s a process,” Phillips said.
“It’s hard for me to dissect it and to say like ‘Okay, well, what am I forgiving him for? For what he did? The addiction? Abandoning me? Am I forgiving him for using me as pawn, for all the things I saw that I never should have seen as a child?’”
“I kind of just had to say like when you’re paid in one lump sum, I just had to say, ‘Okay I’m just going to have to forgive in general, I’m just going to have to forgive all around,’” she said.
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