Minka Kelly gets raw and honest in her upcoming memoir, Tell Me Everything. The actress and model reveals details about her traumatic childhood and what it was like growing up with a single mother who was an exotic dancer. The book is set to release in May.
Poverty, domestic violence, and addiction were a huge part of Minka's childhood with her mom, Maureen. Minka, 42, didn't really come to terms with her story until well into adulthood.
"I spent a lot of my youth wishing my mom was something she wasn't, wishing she was like the other moms," Minka said in an interview with People. "I only was able to really appreciate how special she was when I got much older. In fact when it was maybe a little too late."
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Minka opens up about a lot of shame that she carried from her childhood into adulthood. "I started with the scariest part. The part that I carried the most shame about, the part that I felt the most embarrassed of, the part that I hid my whole life, and the part that I've had people make me feel bad about. And I felt like that was just where I had to be the most brave."
The beginning of her memoir reveals how she performed in peep shows at an adult video store when she was 17. This came about from a mindset of wanting to support herself, since her mom would often leave her for weeks and months at a time.
Minka also endured a toxic relationship, which took her through some of the darkest moments of her life. This relationship with her first boyfriend resulted in an abortion and coerced sex tape.
She also shared how her mom would often take her to the strip club in LA where Maureen performed. She added that if her mom made a lot of money during any night, they'd go grocery shopping at 2 in the morning before heading home.
There was even one time where she and her mom stayed in a storage shed of an apartment complex because they weren't able to pay rent. What Minka has shared so far is only the tip of her childhood that her book will reveal.
Minka only confronted her mother about her upbringing after Maureen was diagnosed with cancer. Her therapist encouraged her to be honest about how her childhood affected her, and fortunately she was able to do so before her mom died from cancer in 2008.
"My childhood was colorful and chaotic, unstable and inconsistent, unpredictable and hard a lot of the times," Minka shared. "But the silver lining is that it made me a very adaptable person."
