Davina McCall teared up as she recalled how a parenting mishap brought back painful childhood memories of being abandoned by her own mother.
The TV presenter, 58, admitted that on her youngest daughter Tilly’s first day of nursery she was an hour late to collect her – which caused her to breakdown as it triggered past trauma.
Speaking on world-renowned therapist and best-selling author Marisa Peer’s new podcast Your Mind, Your Rules, Davina made the candid confession.
On the latest episode, she recalled driving to collect Tilly, now 22, from her first day at nursery, only to discover she was an hour late and her daughter had already been taken home by another parent.
The TV host said: ‘I went to pick her up at 12pm but it had already finished at 11am. The nursery teacher said “oh, Nicola picked her up”.’
‘I sat in the car and started crying, and couldn’t drive, I couldn’t see. I had to just get it out. And then I drove, still crying to Nicola’s house, she opened the door, and I collapsed, and she was like, “oh my god, what’s wrong”. I kept asking if Tilly was ok.’
Davina McCall teared up as she recalled how a parenting mishap brought back painful childhood memories of being abandoned by her own mother
Davina continued: ‘Nicola was like, “yes of course – she’s husking corn in the garden,” and was as happy as Larry. But I felt like this was how I used to feel with my own mother.’
Marisa, who is the founder of Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT), added: ‘She was ok because she wasn’t you, she wasn’t abandoned by her mother, but you felt it because you had felt it.
‘Children take ownership of the problem in order to make sense of them so when a mother abandons a child the child has to own that and says “this is my fault” so once they buy into that they carry it with them.
‘When a parent does not appear to love a child, the child does not stop loving the parent, they stop loving themselves, sometimes for their entire life. And that’s what I work with with my clients, to separate that abandoned child to the healthier adult they can become.’
Tilly is the middle child of Davina’s three children, including Holly, 24, and Chester, 19, with her ex-husband Matthew Robertson, 57.
Davina, who was born in Wimbledon in 1967, before going to live with her English father’s parents in Surrey at the age of three – was told her French mother Florence was going skiing but she never came back.
‘I was never 100% sure that I was going to get collected from the airport,’ Davina said as she recalled flying to Paris alone.
‘My mum wouldn’t be there. And then there would be phone calls, and then there would be, oh s**t, and then there would be somebody coming.’
The TV presenter, 58, admitted that on her youngest daughter Tilly’s first day of nursery she was an hour late to collect her – which caused her to breakdown as it triggered past trauma
Marisa suggested to Davina that her experience had planted a belief that would shape her for decades, which connected to the heroin addiction she developed in her early 20s.
‘I called it a colander,’ she said, describing the emotional void she spent years trying to fill.
‘So you can never feel full. When I was high I’d feel safe. And then it would trickle out.’
Davina said she was given a small pocket mirror by her sponsor in early recovery and being asked to look into it each night and say ‘I love you.’
She told Marisa: ‘I picked it up the first time. I picked it up and looked at myself. I burst into tears. Couldn’t even do that. So it took me a month of doing that every night.
‘I thought, when am I going to stop crying? What is wrong with me? Yeah, I was giving myself a hard time about not being able to do that. And then I picked it up one night and I went, “I like you”, and put it down. And then I cried a lot. And I thought to myself, see, it wasn’t that hard.
‘And then I got used to “I like you”, but it was like a year later I said, “I love you”, but it was, I love you, warts and all. Unconditional.
‘You don’t have to be perfect. I just love you. Yeah, but I don’t think I got the truest sense of self-love until, you know, the last five years or so.’
Your Mind Your Rules published by FlightStory in conjunction with Ebury and Penguin is priced at £20 and is available to buy via www.marisapeer.com.
