Mackenzie Phillips talks about how she learned to forgive her father, The Mamas & the Papas singer John Phillips.
The comments come 14 years after she revealed her 2009 memoir High on arrival that she had an incestuous relationship with a musician who rose to fame in the 1960s. Phillips, 64, addressed the topic of forgiveness in a conversation with her half-sister, Wilson Phillips singer Chynna Phillips Baldwin, which was uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday.
“Dad was something else,” she said. “I get a lot of criticism and a lot of trolling on the internet for having forgiveness in my heart. Forgiveness, because forgiveness is for me, not for the other person. And forgiveness doesn’t mean I sign or agree with what I’m forgiving him for.”
Phillips wrote in her memoir that her father raped her when she was 19 while they were under the influence of drugs and alcohol. She revealed that they then had an incestuous relationship that lasted for 10 years.
“It’s very complicated. It’s very complicated, and yet, I’m at peace,” she continued.
Phillips Baldwin, 55, also took the opportunity to reflect on their father.
WATCH: Mackenzie Phillips tells Oprah Winfrey she felt ‘miserable terror’ after discovering incestuous relationship with father
“Obviously he’s an amazing songwriter and, you know I loved his laugh, and yet there was this whole other side of dad that was, I think, kind of like a monster. He was so dark and you just don’t know who you’re going to get. It was very unpredictable,” she said.
While urging fans to watch the video in an Instagram post, Phillips Baldwin, whose mother is former Mamas & the Papas singer Michelle Phillips, called his older brother a “survivor” and a “winner.”
Mackenzie Phillips: I slept with my own father
Phillips previously revealed why she wanted to speak in detail about her experience in an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2017.
John and Mackenzie Phillips in February 1984.
Patrick McMullan/Getty
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“I felt like I was here with this huge amount of information that might not even be suitable for public use,” Day by day actress Winfrey said. “I didn’t do my due diligence. When I wrote the book I just thought, ‘I’m not going to Google this, I’m not going to Google that. I’m just going to tell my story as it happened to me.’ But then, in retrospect, there was some due diligence that I failed to do. Like preparing for the loss of family.”
In his 2017 book Hopeful Healing: Essays on Managing Addiction Recovery and SurvivingPhillips shared that her discovery destroyed relationships with family members.
“I realize that some in my family have chosen to hold on to the pain and anger they felt when I discovered the truth about my dad,” Phillips wrote in 2017. “I understand that they are still caught up in the textbook response of devaluing the victim and condemning the perpetrator.”
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Source: HIS Education