Christine Brown Drops Bombshell: Her Friendship with Meri Collapsed Over Just 10 Cents!
“Sister Wives”’ Christine Brown Reveals Her Friendship with Meri Imploded Over 10 Cents: ‘Mama Bear Came Roaring’ (Exclusive)
(L-R) Christine Brown Woolley and Meri Brown on ‘Sister Wives’.
NEED TO KNOW
- Christine Brown Woolley opened up about the reason for her fallout with former sister wife Meri Brown in her new memoir. Now, she’s addressing it further with PEOPLE
- “There’s enough that happened, and we don’t need to dwell on it,” the mother of six says
- Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom is now available for purchase
It’s no secret to Sister Wives fans that Christine Brown Woolley and Meri Brown aren’t on the best of terms. Now, they finally have a reason for the fallout.
In Christine’s new memoir, Sister Wife, out Sept. 2, the mother of six wrote that she “debated whether to tell this part” since “we’ve all changed so much since those early years.” But, for the first time, she explained that Kody Brown’s two ex-wives’ friendship fell apart over a disagreement involving their children and 10 cents.
“The dynamics of polygamist parenting can feel like a seesaw, and Meri, even with one child to care for, was the top wife in our polygamy pyramid,” Christine wrote. “We followed her rules when she was around to keep the peace, but her rules felt punitive and unfair. I had to make a decision about what was best for me and my family within a family, and it changed our relationship forever.”
The cover for ‘Sister Wife’, Christine Brown Woolley’s memoir.
“One day, the kids went to the store. [My daughter] Mykelti, who was about eight, went up to the cash register, and she was maybe ten cents short. It was little-kid stuff—she was probably buying candy. The cashier, who knew us, spotted her the dime,” she continued. “No big deal. But Meri’s Leon, who was also just a little kid—maybe nine—told Meri about it. Meri lost her mind.”
“She was mad that Mykelti had embarrassed her in front of the cashier, and that she had embarrassed Leon. She yelled at Mykelti, who couldn’t understand what she had done wrong. I couldn’t either,” she noted.
As a result, Christine explained how “that was the day, after a series of too many similar experiences, I ended my friendship with Meri.”
‘I’d had enough, and my mama bear came roaring,” she concluded.
“‘Don’t talk to my kids,’ I yelled. ‘I don’t want you near them. I don’t want you to come downstairs anymore. Our relationship is done!'”
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Christine Brown Woolley on ‘Sister Wives’.
Looking back on that moment, Christine now tells PEOPLE exclusively why she decided to address it all these years later.
“I’m going to hit it as briefly as possible, but just so people can be like, ‘Okay,'” Christine, 53, says.
“I think what people understand more than anything is just because my life is public, it doesn’t mean I have to be public about everything,” she explains. “There’s enough that happened, and we don’t need to dwell on it.”
“Let’s just move on.”
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Despite their broken friendship, Christine and Meri shared a heartfelt moment on the most recently aired season of Sister Wives, which involved the pair embracing in a hug after Meri, 54, revealed her split from Kody.
“I love you,” Meri said, and Christine responded, “I love you too.”
‘Sister Wives’ season 13 key art.
Christine’s new book touches on very personal aspects of her life, from her upbringing in the Mormon faith and her rocky marriage to Kody to her brief addiction to Oxycodone.
“I feel like there’s a rest of the story that wasn’t told before,” she shares. “Even though I really feel like our show did our best to be authentic and everything, I really tried my best to be authentic. I still felt like there was a huge part that I kept hidden just to be a peacemaker, to make everything work.”
For the reality star, it was of the utmost importance that her story not just connected with women but people of various backgrounds.
“I think there’s a lot of people that were in situations like mine, men and women, and people just in general who were in, are in relationships where they feel less than, or they feel like their opinion doesn’t really matter, or they feel mistreated,” she concludes. “I feel like there’s so many people like that, and I think overall, what I would love is for people to realize that you got to find yourself, and you got to make sure that you live life for yourself.”
Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom is now available for purchase. Additionally, a new season of Sister Wives premieres Sunday, Sept. 28, at 10 p.m. ET/PT on TLC.
Read the original article on People
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Christine Brown Reflects on Real Reason Why Her Family Moved to Flagstaff — and Why It Made Her ‘Furious’
Christine Brown
NEED TO KNOW
- Christine Brown is pulling back the curtain on her family’s move away from Las Vegas in her new memoir Sister Wife
- The TLC star says she believes her ex-husband Kody was pushing their family’s move to Flagstaff, Ariz., because he had an ulterior motive
- Along with Christine, the other wives in the plural marriage at the time — Meri, Robyn and Janelle — all made the move to Arizona in 2018
Christine Brown is looking back at her family’s previous move to Flagstaff, Ariz. — and how she thinks there may have been more to it than her ex-husband Kody Brown was letting on.
In her new memoir Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom (released on Sept. 2), the Sister Wives star, 53, gets candid about the reason why she believes Kody was pushing their family to relocate to Flagstaff from Las Vegas in 2017.
Along with Christine, the other wives in the Brown family’s plural marriage at the time — Meri Brown, Janelle Brown and Robyn Brown — were expected to make the move as well, along with most of their 18 children that make up the entire family.
In her new book, Christine, 53, recalls: “One day, out of nowhere, Kody sat us all down and explained that we needed to leave Vegas, saying it would be safer and better for us financially. He presented a plan, but said we could pick where we ended up.”
“As it turned out, even the picking of the place had been preordained,” she claims.
Robyn, Meri, Kody, Christine and Janelle Brown
Christine — who shares kids Aspyn, 30, Mykelti, 28, Paedon, 26, Gwendlyn, 23, Ysabel, 22, and Truely, 15, with Kody — notes that she “did not want to take the kids away from their friends and schools” at the time, but she ultimately wanted to be a “team player” and do what was best for the family.
“I couldn’t split up the family,” she explains. “I believed this was my kids’ best chance to have a good relationship with their dad.”
However, after their family “uprooted” their lives and settled in Las Vegas, she learned Kody may have had an ulterior motive for pushing the big change.
“About a month after we moved in 2018, we learned that Dayton, Robyn and Kody’s son, had been accepted to the university in Flagstaff,” she recalls. “I was furious. Was that why we moved? So Robyn could be closer to her son while I was pulled farther from my children?”
At the time, Christine was leaving behind her older children, Aspyn and Mykelti, who were staying back in Las Vegas.
On top of having moved to Flagstaff “under false pretenses,” Christine writes that another strain the family was dealing with was paying off the 14-acre property they purchased to build their family compound on, called Coyote Pass.
Kody, Robyn, Janelle and Meri at Coyote Pass during a previous ‘Sister Wives’ episode
The original plan was for each wife to build separate homes on the compound so the entire family could live close to one another. However, due to financial issues and multiple wives deciding to leave the plural marriage, that plan unraveled. Coyote Pass served as a major point of contention in the last few seasons of Sister Wives, and the property was eventually sold earlier this year.
Christine finally chose to leave Kody in November 2021 after 25 years of marriage, while Meri and Janelle both announced their separation from Kody within 14 months of Christine leaving. Kody is now only married to Robyn, 46.
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Cover of Christine Brown’s new memoir
Earlier this month, Christine opened up to PEOPLE about how her new memoir offers an inside look at their family in a way that fans have never seen before.
“I feel like there’s a rest of the story that wasn’t told before,” Christine told PEOPLE exclusively. “Even though I really feel like our show did our best to be authentic and everything — I really tried my best to be authentic.”
“I still felt like there was a huge part that I kept hidden just to be a peacemaker, to make everything work, and everything,” she continued. “And then, through leaving, people asked all the time, “How did you do it? How’d you do it?’ I really feel like it’s kind of like a map of this is what was happening, this is what was happening that I didn’t agree with, this is what was happening that made me stronger, and this is what made me leave.”
The book offers “a progression of what happened … more of an insider kind of a thing,” she added.
Read the original article on People
“Sister Wives”’ Christine Brown Learned She’s Related to Meryl Streep. How the Oscar Winner Helped Her Give Birth (Exclusive)
Christine Brown (L); Meryl Streep (R)
NEED TO KNOW
- Sister Wives star Christine Brown opens up exclusively to PEOPLE about discovering she’s related to Meryl Streep via DNA testing
- The reality star also reveals she’s related to a pair of A-list siblings and “the original Viking”
- Brown detailed in her new memoir, Sister Wife, about how Streep, ABBA and Mamma Mia! helped her deliver her daughter Gwendlyn
Christine Brown is the dancing queen.
The Sister Wives star, 53, reveals in her new memoir, Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom, out now, that she’s related to beloved actress Meryl Streep.
Brown mentions it when revisiting the birth of her daughter Gwendlyn, recalling how the 76-year-old Oscar winner helped her through the pain in an extremely roundabout way.
Christine Brown on ‘Sister Wives’
The reality star said in her book that Gwendlyn’s birth was her “absolute favorite.”
Brown noted that the pain “never got that bad,” and that she told the doctors at the time, “‘Turn on ABBA,’ I said. ‘I got this.'”
“They turned on ‘Mamma Mia,’ and I started lip syncing,” she remembered. “I went into transition during the song, crouched down on the floor on all fours, worked through the transition, got up, finished the song, and had her in fifteen minutes. It was amazing.”
After divulging how the Swedish pop group’s hit 1975 song helped her welcome Gwendlyn to the world, Brown connected the dots to a recent genetic test that connected her to Streep.
“Also, I recently found out, through DNA testing, that I’m related to Meryl Streep,” she wrote.
Christine Brown Woolley’s memoir ‘Sister Wife’
Brown further expanded upon her connection to Streep when speaking to PEOPLE exclusively about her book.
“This is the thing … I’m probably just as related to you than I am to Meryl Streep,” she says.
During the DNA testing, Brown reveals that she also discovered that her genetic code showed that she is also related to actor siblings Jake Gyllenhaal and Maggie Gyllenhaal as well as “the original Viking.”
“But my kids are always like, ‘Well, we always knew you were related to Meryl Streep because of Mamma Mia,” she continues. “It’s through Mamma Mia is what the real connection is because I feel like it’s a similar story. I don’t know, it’s so silly.”
“When I was reading the book because I did the audiobook for it — which was so much fun, by the way — that’s when some things came out and I realized how that sounded, and I’m like, ‘Oh, well, there we go,'” she adds.
Meryl Streep in ‘Mamma Mia!’ (2008)
The throughline from Brown and Streep is largely thanks to the Mamma Mia! films.
Streep starred in the 2008 jukebox musical film featuring the music of ABBA alongside Christine Baranski, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Dominic Cooper, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård and Julie Walters.
The film is an adaptation of the 1999 Broadway musical of the same name, which follows a bride-to-be named Sophie who invites three men to her wedding on a Greek island not knowich when of them is her father. Steep plays Sophie’s mother, Donna, in the film.
Streep — a three-time Oscar winner thanks to roles in Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie’s Choice and The Iron Lady — reprised the role in the 2018 film sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.
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Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom is now available, wherever books are sold. Additionally, Sister Wives season 20 premieres Sunday, Sept. 28, at 10 p.m. ET/PT on TLC.
