What I skipped was the self-examination. I had to realize I was not a victim — that I had made choices based on my belief system I had that kept me in these unhealthy relationships. And if I didn't change the thinking, I was not going to be able to change the behavior.
Baxter credits finding the right therapist for helping her see the self-destructive patterns in her life. Baxter says that negative self image prevented her from leaving David Birney when the marriage started going south. He was very smart and very well educated and he thought I was stupid so I thought I was stupid too. So that allowed me to stay. Baxter says Birney both physically and verbally abused her, which he denies. You'd clean what had to be cleaned and you'd straighten it up, and get an excuse for what you didn't have done because you were going to have to answer for it.
It felt like a reign of terror. One of Baxter's regrets is that she used her children as pawns during her divorces. I battled with David for eight long years in the courts before that divorce was finalized. I think she was hoping if we called her that, people might assume she was our aunt or maybe an older sister. She was a scrappy, tough, smart, and wily survivor.
Memaw was from Arkansas and married five times over the course of her life. She kept burying husbands and sometimes I think there should be some exhumations to find out why. Whitney was only six when her real dad, Harry C. One of her stepfathers, Al, patented a fitting for oil rigs — his last name was Wells, ironically. He and Memaw would drift from oil field to oil field around the country.
Just as often, Memaw would leave her kids behind, once with a couple of former missionaries and another time with her elementary school teacher.
From that day forward, Whitney realized that no matter what school she was in, the drama department would become home until Memaw announced it was time to pull up stakes and move again. Whitney said that the nearest thing she had to a real family when she was growing up were the casts of the plays that she appeared in.
Whitney was instead devoted to her brothers and sisters of the theater. One story she delighted in telling was about the time she was appearing in a Pasadena City College production that had a furniture dilemma: one scene needed a table, chairs, and a couch for the set, and none could be located.
On opening night, Memaw shows up to watch her daughter perform, and when the curtain rises, she sees her entire living room set onstage. To reveal it in such a fashion required real chutzpah, which Whitney had in spades. My brother Dick, the eldest, is very philosophical about her. After that she would be on her own. Whitney attended the lower division of Pasadena City College, a sort of accelerated high school program for students interested in the performing arts, and she helped out at the college radio station, which was where she met my father, Tom Baxter.
Just after Whitney turned eighteen, she got her high school diploma, she and Tom got married, and Whitney was finally able to move away from her mother. Women with Will. TV Shows. Inspirational Stories.
Advertise with us. Contact us. About us. Celebrity TV Shows July 03, Share Share this pen. Meredith Baxter felt that she had no value. Her mother's action deeply affected the actress. Meredith's struggles with alcohol. Read also. Related posts.
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