Mary Jo Eustace on Being a Single Parent After Dean McDermott Split: ‘It’s Challenging’ (Exclusive)

The podcast host and mom of two says motherhood has been a “great experience,” but she raised her son and daughter “mostly” on her “own”

Mary Jo Eustace says that parenting in the public eye has been “challenging.”

The Canadian podcast host, who was married to actor Dean McDermott for 13 years before their high profile 2006 divorce, also says that raising her children amid the media gaze has been “disorienting.”

“I would not wish that on anybody, quite frankly,” Eustace, 61, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “Because the divide between what’s actually happening and what’s presented is great. And the soundbites and innuendos and everything [have] very little to do with the reality of what’s going on. It’s been disorienting the whole time because you have your life and then you have how it’s perceived in the media and there’s a big, huge difference between what is actual and what is not."

“So, I feel bad for any kid or family who has that extra dimension. It’s very challenging," she continues.

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Eustace — who made a name for herself in her native Canada in the mid-1990s as the cohost of the cooking show What’s For Dinner? — was reluctantly thrust into the celebrity spotlight in 2005 when she and McDermott, 56, split. The following year, he married his Mind Over Murder costar, Tori Spelling.

While Spelling, 50, and McDermott went on to have five children and several reality TV shows together, Eustace focused on what was important to her, raising her son Jack, 24, and daughter Lola, 17, out of the limelight.

She says, “It wasn’t part of my life with them. Let’s put it that way. They’re not characters in a movie. They’re real people. So, I don’t want them perceived in any way that they’re not.”

Instead, Eustace, who says she doesn’t follow the world of celebrity, focused on raising Jack and Lola, whom she and McDermott were in the process of adopting at the time of their split, “mostly” on her “own.”

“There wasn’t a lot of co-parenting. I did most of it on my own,” says Eustace. Adding that it was “nonexistent," she also emphasized that Lola (whose last name is Eustace) is "my child."

While McDermott appears in photos of their family celebrations on her Instagram feed here or there, she insists that, "Practically speaking it just didn’t [exist].”

McDermott did not respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.

In June, the star posted photos of himself posing with Lola, while celebrating her high school graduation. The teen also appeared in a photo of a New Year's Eve family party that Spelling shared on Instagram in January, weeks after the actress said during an episode of Bethenny Frankel's ReWives podcast that both Jack and Lola were "living with" them over the Christmas season.

Eustace, who briefly cohosted the podcast series Ex’s and Uh-Oh’s with McDermott last year, refuses to focus on the negative, or the past, and instead embraces what single parenthood has taught her.

“I’m a great parent," she says. "I had great support from amazing people and my family. It was a great experience. It made me the person I am today. I have empathy for people who’ve been in the same situation. I have a lot of friends who are single parents and it’s the hardest job in the world.”

She adds, “[There’s] no victimhood here. It was a different path, and I did my best with it. The good, the bad, the ugly, all of it. I own all of it. We’re at a great place.”

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For the past two decades, Eustace focused on supporting Jack, Lola and herself by working hard. “I did lots of TV. I hosted radio shows. I wrote books. I created my own skincare line with partners out of Miami. I was always in the creative space," she says.

One of her books, Scared Wheatless: Delicious Gluten-Free Recipes that Won’t Make You Lose Your Mind, was partly inspired by Lola, who at 8 was diagnosed with alopecia. The autoimmune disease robbed her of “70 percent of her hair.”

Eustace says the book was the result of her quest to help heal her daughter. “[It] was a project of love and health,” she says.

Today Lola has thick, long brown hair and is on her way to Washington State University, where she will study pre-med in the fall. “She’s applying for 9 million scholarships,” says Eustace, who boasts that her daughter is a “hard worker.”

She’s equally proud of her son Jack, who is studying to get into law school. “He’s amazing — doing really well. He’s going to do his LSATs for law school because I’ve always emphasized education," she says.

Eustace says she and her son have moved on from a December 2022 disagreement, which saw Jack write, and then delete, an Instagram post accusing her of putting “strain” on their “family dynamic.”

“I adore him. I love him. We have an incredibly strong relationship. We always have,” she says of her son. “He is doing very well, being in proximity to a situation that would be difficult to navigate for any young [man]. So, I’m very proud of him and we’re at a wonderful place.”

As for allowing the public drama of her divorce to seep into her home when she was raising her children, Eustace says, “It’s so in the rearview mirror. The circus doesn’t come to this town. Real life is not that.”

It's no surprise then that Eustace refuses to comment on the current status of McDermott and Spelling's relationship. (In June, the actor announced on Instagram that he and his wife had split. He deleted the post within a few hours.)

Real life for Eustace and her children is being close to her parents, her siblings, nieces and nephews. “My dad was a lawyer. My mom’s an artist. My sister’s an architect. My brother lives in San Clemente. He’s got five boys … This is not our lane,” she says of the celebrity world.

“I got thrown into this. This is not something I ever sought out. I had my own career. I had my personality, my own opinions, everything. This is not something I ever courted or had any interest in at all," she adds.

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Today, Eustace is pleased that her hopes for her children are being realized. “I want my kids’ minds to be expanded to have education, and that’s what they’re doing,” she says.

“They’re committed to it. Pre-med and law are pretty great. I want them to use their brains and they are. That’s what I’ve always wanted."

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