Kendra Wilkinson Reminds Us That She Had a Really Crappy Childhood
Kendra Wilkinson revisits her painful teen years on ‘Kendra on Top.’ (WEtv)
As dramatic as Kendra Wilkinson’s marriage to Hank Baskett has been, it doesn’t hold a candle to her childhood.
The reality star reminds us just how craptastic her pre-Playboy days were in tonight’s episode of Kendra on Top when she again opens up about being institutionalized and trying to kill herself as a high schooler.
“When I was a teenager, I battled some severe depression,” the mom of two, 30, tells her therapist, Dr. Monica Shahbaznia, in a sneak peek of the episode on People.com. “I attempted suicide a couple times. I went to a mental institution… drugs, overdosing, slitting wrists, all that stuff.”
Kendra has talked about “all that stuff” before, including in an E! True Hollywood Story special back in 2010. Hugh Hefner’s ex got candid about her “drug days,” which started at age 13 when she tried cocaine for the first time. Within a few years, she was using “every day, every minute” and started cutting too. When she was 15, she swallowed “a half dozen or so” pills, leading to her mother, Patti Wilkinson, putting her into a psychiatric facility.
Despite her troubled upbringing, Kendra graduated from high school in 2003. (Splash News)
“It was crazy in that place,” the San Diego native has said about being institutionalized. “We didn’t see daylight. We weren’t allowed outside. It was basically a jail, but it was a hospital."
After she was released, she ran away from home with a bad news boyfriend. However, things weren’t all bad. Despite the drama, she played sports in high school — softball and soccer — and high school in 2003. She later moved to L.A., where she met Hefner and, as they say, the rest is history.
In tonight’s Kendra on Top, she delves into her troubled relationship with her estranged mother whom she describes as "sadistic.” (Mother and daughter previously hashed it out on Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars, also a WEtv show, last spring.)
“I was left on my own,” Kendra says in the preview. “I was a young f–king girl. All I wanted was for my mom to say, ‘I love you, and I’m here for you.’ I never got that.”
Kendra is dealing with old wounds — also including her feud with fellow Girls Next Door star Holly Madison — on her show this season. Last year, the blonde was tasked with healing her marriage to Hank after she thought he cheated with a transgender model.
