After news broke of her son Tripp Easton moving back to the family’s home state to live with his dad, Bristol Palin is sharing the “gut-wrenching” detail of how her only son informed her of his decision.
“He just texted me and was like, ‘Hey Mom, I’m not coming back,’” Bristol—daughter of Todd and Sarah Palin—recalled on the Aug. 26 episode of Cheryl Burke’s Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans podcast.
Palin, who lives in Texas with her daughters Sailor Grace, 8, and Atlee Bay, 7, from her previous marriage to Dakota Meyer, shares her 15-year-old son Tripp with ex-fiancé Levi Johnston.
“At first I’m like, ‘I’m coming up to Alaska. We’re not doing this.’ I was so mad, so mad,” the mom of three, 33, admitted, sharing that Tripp used to spend a couple of weeks in Alaska with Johnston, 34, and then return to her in Texas, whereas she splits her time with her daughters 50/50 with Meyer, 36.
“It still is gut-wrenching to me,” the Teen Mom OG alum explained. “It’s been just Tripp and I, and then I had my girls, but it’s always been Tripp and I. It’s changed the dynamic of so much.”
“But it’s one of those things where he’s almost 16. He does need his dad. And he needs that relationship,” Bristol continued. “He thinks that this is best right now, and all I can do is just hope and pray that it is what’s best.”
“Selfishly, I’m like, I just want him with me forever. He’s my best friend. My kids are my whole world,” she said. “But I can’t be selfish in that. He needs to strengthen that relationship, and I just need to support it.”
Palin revealed earlier this month via Instagram that Tripp wasn’t living with her in Texas as she showed her daughters getting ready to go back to school.
“This has been the hardest ‘first day of school’ yet with one of the biggest pieces of my heart missing,” she wrote on her Instagram Story on August 14. “Tripp has decided to finish out high school in Alaska to be closer to his dad and our entire family.”