Amber Portwood‘s relationship with her 12-year-old daughter, Leah, may be improving, but that doesn’t mean the past has been forgotten. During the Jan. 25 episode of Teen Mom: Family Reunion, Amber opened up about the difficulties she’s faced with trying to repair her relationship with her daughter, and how Leah’s “embarrassed” by her.
Amber decided to get candid after Briana DeJesus started talking about her own relationship with her own daughter and whether or not she feels it’d be appropriate to take Nova to see a therapist. Briana said she doesn’t think Nova is at a place where she needs therapy to help her deal with the strained relationship between her parents, but everyone told her that therapy never hurts.
Amber knows that personally because she’s currently going to therapy with Leah, and she said it’s been great for them. “She doesn’t want anything to do with me,” Amber said, while discussing Leah. But therapy was “the best thing to f***ing do” for them, she added.
Then when Cheyenne Floyd asked Amber to confirm that Leah’s “embarrassed” by her — something Amber must have said off-camera — Amber replied, “She is — she’s said it before.”
Cheyenne then asked Amber how she navigates discussing things with Leah that have aired on Teen Mom OG over the years, and Amber said, “There’s no excuse. I wasn’t sober. I had to get sober. The only way I was going to get sober was if I told them, ‘Put me in prison.’ When I went, I finally got sober. I was seeing Leah, but then had this void, [and] I started seeing all these men. There’s no excuse.”
Amber’s ex, Gary Shirley, and co-star, Maci Bookout, then commended Amber for “growing” so much over the last few years. They admitted to seeing a vast difference in the way Amber talks about her past.
“I thought everything I was doing was fine,” Amber said, as she went on to say she used her depression as an excuse in the past. She let it dictate when she saw or didn’t see Leah, but since then, she’s “changed” that behavior. I’m not “making excuses to her anymore,” Amber told the group.
Want more? New episodes of Teen Mom: Family Reunion air Tuesdays at 8pm on MTV.