Barbara Bush Once Thought About Killing Herself
Barbara Bush apparently fell into such a deep depression that she once contemplated suicide, according to a new report. At times, she wanted to slam her car into another passing vehicle or steer into the nearest tree.
“I felt terrible,” she told journalist Susan Page in The Matriarch, which will be published on Tuesday. “I would pull over and park so I wouldn’t go hit a tree. I mean, I really felt that depressed. I really wasn’t brave enough to do that, but that’s why I pulled over, so I wouldn’t do that or I wouldn’t run into another car.”
Barbara died last spring at 92. She and her family gave extensive interviews to Susan, and even provided Barbara’s diaries for Susan to read and quote. And let us tell you, this journalist went all OUT in depicting Barbra’s inner life.
“Barbara Bush was the public figure Americans felt they knew most but really understood least,” Susan writes, according to People. “Many embraced her as a down-to-earth grandmother who sported a triple strand of faux pearls and joked about her wrinkles. That soft-focus impression wasn’t inaccurate, but it was decidedly incomplete. In my view, she stands as the most underestimated First Lady of modern times. And perhaps the most interesting.”
Barbara also apparently opened up about how much she doesn’t like Donald Trump, as well as her experiences with depression in the 1970s.
“Back in Washington, George Bush plunged into the demands of his new post, but Barbara Bush found herself falling into the worst personal crisis she had faced since daughter Robin had died more than two decades earlier. Overwhelmed by pain and loneliness, she contemplated suicide,” Susan writes.
Susan continues, “After the crisis passed, she blamed a toxic combination of factors for the darkness,” which apparently included the secrecy required of her husband’s CIA job, plus the hormonal effects of menopause, and change in home life.
What a read this will be!