The well-known Real Housewives of New York City alum, Bethenny Frankel, recently announced a temporary halt on her widely applauded iHeart Radio podcast, Just B Divorced with Bethenny Frankel. This decision came in the wake of the demise of her mother, Bernadette Birk.
Frankel, via her Instagram stories, informed her followers about her decision to temporarily withdraw her podcast, which happened to coincide with an overwhelming response and a barrage of messages, both of which were concurrent with a significant loss in her life.
“I have chosen to temporarily remove my divorce podcast as a result of an overwhelming response and an influx of messages that have converged with the most significant loss of my life,” Frankel wrote on her Instagram Stories. “It is impossible for me to give and process both of these traumatic events at the same time.”
The unanticipated situations, along with the reaction to the triggering subject of her podcast, reinforced its importance, she noted. Frankel assured her listeners of continuing the crucial dialogue in the coming weeks to aid them in navigating their challenging divorce journeys.
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Frankel expressed gratitude towards her audience for their support in both areas and dispelled rumors of any backlash leading to the pause of her podcast.
“I simply can’t respond to the questions and demands at this time and will resume shortly,” Frankel said, calling her podcast a “shocking success.”
Frankel, 53, and her ex-spouse, Jason Hoppy, 53, tied the knot in a grand televised wedding in 2010. The couple welcomed their daughter Bryn shortly after.
Despite their relationship being documented in two spinoff shows for Bravo, Bethenny Getting Married and Bethenny Ever After, tensions between the two started escalating. They announced their separation in December 2012 and filed for divorce in January 2013.
However, uncoupling proved to be a longer ordeal than their union. The duo was entangled in complicated court proceedings and a protracted custody battle for nearly a decade. They reached a financial settlement in 2016 and finalized their divorce in January 2021.
During the inaugural episode of her podcast, aired on April 12, Frankel described her divorce from Hoppy as more traumatizing than death. She compared her divorce experience to the death of someone very close, referring to the suspected overdose of her ex-boyfriend Dennis Shields in 2018.
“I thought I would never survive it,” she continued. “I did not see a way out. It was suffocating. I thought I was gonna be miserable for the rest of my life. I thought I was gonna have a terrible life. I literally could not see out of it — and I, at the time that I could not see out of it, was a well-known, wealthy, powerful, successful, attractive, smart woman with a whole big career ahead of her. So imagine what a person who doesn’t have all those things going for them goes through and feels like?”
Frankel confessed that the tumultuous divorce left her with “massive trust issues” and “post-traumatic stress disorder”, which is one of the reasons she is hesitant to marry her fiancé Paul Bernon. She spoke about how the intense experience questioned her self-worth.
“I have been through a f—ing war, a war. I have questioned myself as a human, as a parent, because I was told so many times how terrible I was, and disgusting, and old, and irrelevant. … had no power to get out of it. … This was this was mental and emotional torture, what I went through. … It was literally the most traumatizing thing that I will hopefully ever go through in my life.”
Frankel’s mother, Birk, passed away due to lung cancer on April 19 at 73 years of age. Despite their complicated relationship, they managed to reconnect later in life so Birk could know Frankel’s daughter, Bryn.
Frankel shared beautiful memories of her mother on Instagram, acknowledging that their challenging relationship made her “strong, tough” and “a survivor who is able to handle anything.”
“Goodbye mom, Bonnie, Bernadette,” Frankel said. “You did the best you could and you are free and at peace.”
