Bronwyn Newport opens up about her daughter’s paternal side of the family.
Latest plugin for The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City sat down with PEOPLE to talk about why she shared details about her 18-year-old daughter Gwen’s estranged grandparents.
Newport revealed on the show that Gwen, whose father died when she was young, never met his family. In fact, the coincidence became a theme in the show when Newport unwittingly revealed the identity of Gwen’s paternal grandparents to cast member Lisa Barlow, who is friends with the couple.
Revealing that she had rarely spoken about the subject publicly or privately before, Newport says she was hesitant to give it life on the reality show.
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Bronwyn Newport and Lisa Barlow.
Arturo Holmes/Getty; Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
“I’m so proud of Gwen,” she tells PEOPLE. “I know there are a lot of questions about whether this was a planned thing or a surprise, and it was incredibly shocking to me that Lisa [Barlow] knew my daughter’s family. I probably wouldn’t have actually gone to the show if I had known that in advance. But there was a point after we found out that we talked about it as a family and said, ‘Do we want this to come up with other women? Do we want this to appear later? Or is there a way to fix this?’”
She continues: “The way we would handle this without the cameras here, [was] for Gwen to tell her story to Todd and me and for us to accept what she has to say. So we let the cameras follow it. And I think at the time I didn’t think I was doing this noble thing, I just thought I was doing the honest thing, which is what happened and the cameras were on, so they managed to capture it.”
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The show documented a deep conversation between Newport and her daughter, in which Gwen expressed her reluctance to ever welcome her grandparents into her life considering they had gone 18 years without reaching out. After the episode aired, Newport says she received “positive” feedback that helped her on her own journey of acceptance.
“It’s become really nice for me to hear so many people say they’re the kid in that story or the mom in that story,” says Newport. “And I learned a lot of tools by listening to other people’s stories, so that I can be a better mom Gwen from now on. There were a lot of messages that I had to read to Gwen and tell her how much it resonated with other people.”
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Bronwyn Newport and her daughter Gwen (left).
Bronwyn Newport/Instagram
“I think when you’re going through it and when it’s hard, it’s really great to have someone else say, ‘This is how it might end up for you,’ or ‘This is what happened to me,'” Newport explains. “And so many people were impressed by her vulnerability and how mature she is, and I’m almost mad that her room is kind of messy. So it was nice for me to see this beautiful version of her, that everyone loves. And I was like, ‘Oh no. I’m raising a really fantastic kid.'”
Newport says she felt like she’d been carrying a “secret” for so long, so it was a relief to finally share it.
“What changed who I was as a person was that I was a single mother my entire adult life, I was someone who kind of suppressed this trauma for the betterment of my child,” she explains.
“It’s a very strange thing when your story and someone else’s story become intertwined, and your feelings are not completely separate from their feelings,” she adds. “So I definitely never want to tell Gwen’s story for her. I always want him to be able to do it how, when, if, where, with whomever he wants. I never want to tell her family’s story, but a big part of this is my story and how she changed me and made me the person I am today.”
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The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City airs Wednesdays at 9pm ET on Bravo.
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Source: HIS Education