I Read Hayden Panettiere’s This Is Me: A Reckoning

I finished Hayden Panettiere’s memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, just a few weeks ago. And normally, I would read a celebrity memoir, tell you whether I liked it, maybe share a few things that surprised me, and move on.

I wasn’t planning to write a whole post about this one. Then Hayden died.

And after having just listened to this woman tell me her entire life story in her own voice, I couldn’t stop thinking about the book.

Then I found out Brian Hickerson was reportedly with her in South Carolina when she died… and that made me really angry.

Now, before I get into that, I want to say this because I’ve already seen conspiracy theories floating around online. I do not think somebody in Hollywood killed Hayden Panettiere to stop her from talking. I also am not saying Brian Hickerson killed her.

What I am saying is that after hearing Hayden talk about this relationship in her own words, I believe Brian was an incredibly destructive person in her life. And finding out he was apparently back in that life at the end made the entire book hit differently for me.

The Brian Hickerson part is hard to listen to now

Hayden talks about Brian a lot in the memoir, and what she describes is horrible.

There were arrests for domestic violence cases, and he went to jail. She talks about getting to the point where she was willing to cooperate with authorities and feeling like there finally needed to be consequences for what had happened.

So imagine listening to all of that, finishing the book, and then finding out they had apparently reconnected.

My immediate reaction was basically: NO.

Like, of all the people who could have been around this woman, why was this man back?

And yes, I know abusive relationships are complicated. People leave and go back. Trauma gets mixed up with love. Addiction, loneliness, familiarity, and all kinds of other things can make these relationships incredibly difficult to escape. I understand that.

But as someone who had just listened to Hayden describe what this relationship had done to her, it was still awful to hear. And knowing he was reportedly with her when she died makes those chapters really difficult to think about now.

Again, I’m not saying his presence proves he caused her death. It doesn’t. I’m talking about what Hayden herself says this relationship did to her over the years.

And Brian isn’t even the only person in this book who made me mad. Just wait until we get to her mother.

Addiction is a big part of this book

This memoir is really dark. Probably the biggest thread running through the whole thing is Hayden’s struggle with addiction.

She talks very openly about what happened after she had her daughter, Kaya.

She almost died giving birth. The birth itself was traumatic. Then she developed severe postpartum depression. And she talks about that feeling of looking at your life and thinking, “I have everything I’m supposed to want. Why am I not happy?”

She started drinking to cope, and then the addiction got worse. There was treatment, then relapse. Prescription drugs became part of the problem too.

She also talks about being given what she describes as a “happy pill” when she was a teenager because she needed to perk up for red-carpet interviews.

And when you hear all of this, the conspiracy theories around her death make even less sense to me. Hayden wasn’t hiding the fact that she had been struggling. She tells you, in detail. This battle had been going on for years.

Then I heard the Neutrogena story and got mad all over again

This story wasn’t one I remembered from the memoir itself. Hayden talked about it while promoting the book on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast.

She had been associated with Neutrogena for years. And millennials, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Those commercials were everywhere.

Then Hayden publicly talked about having postpartum depression. According to Hayden, the company moved toward ending the relationship, and a morality clause became part of the issue.

Excuse me?

A woman says she has postpartum depression and somehow that becomes the morality issue?

We constantly tell women to talk about this stuff. Speak up. Ask for help. Normalize postpartum depression. Make other women feel less alone. Then someone does exactly that and there are professional consequences?

That really bothered me. She needed support. She didn’t need another reason to feel ashamed about what she was going through.

Her brother’s death clearly broke something in her

Hayden was incredibly close with her younger brother, Jansen. She talks about his struggles with drugs in the memoir and how worried she was about him.

I do want to make an important distinction here. His official cause of death was related to an enlarged heart and heart complications. He did not officially die from an overdose. But Hayden had been worried about his drug use before he died.

And losing him devastated her. You can feel that in the book. She talks about him almost like losing him meant losing part of herself.

Think about what was already going on in her life at that point. She was already dealing with addiction and trying to stay sober. Then she lost one of the people she loved most. She also carried a lot of guilt because she couldn’t save him.

That grief hangs over the later part of the memoir.

And then we need to talk about her childhood

Hayden started working when she was basically a baby. Her mom wasn’t just her mom. She was also heavily involved in managing Hayden’s career, and that boundary got really messy.

At one point, Hayden basically wanted her mother to just be her mother, which seems like a pretty normal thing for a kid to want.

But here is the story that made me stop and go, “Wait. WHAT?”

The baby teeth.

According to Hayden, her mother worked with a dentist to create a retainer with Hayden’s baby teeth so that losing her teeth wouldn’t interfere with her ability to keep working as a child actress.

I’m sorry. What?

I’m judging Mom. I’m also judging the dentist. Because who hears that idea and says, “Yep, sounds good. Let’s do it.”

There is this feeling throughout the book that Hayden’s ability to keep working was incredibly important from a very young age. And when you know everything that happened later, it’s hard not to look back at that childhood and wonder what growing up like that did to her.

Her “friend” who put her in some really disturbing situations

This was another part of the book where I kept thinking, “Where were the adults protecting her?”

Hayden describes trusting a woman whom she thought was a friend and protector. That woman would bring her into situations involving powerful or famous men without Hayden fully understanding what had been arranged or what was expected of her.

Basically, Hayden would figure out what was happening after she was already there.

One of those situations involved being put into bed with a famous singer-songwriter, who was British… and naked. Hayden realized what was going on and got herself out of there. She also talks about inappropriate behavior from other powerful men in Hollywood, although she chooses not to name everyone.

And this is another reason I don’t walk away from the book thinking there was some giant Hollywood conspiracy surrounding her death. My takeaway is much simpler.

Hayden was put into dangerous situations. People she trusted did not always protect her. Predatory behavior was normalized around her. And this pattern of having unhealthy people around her continued for years.

She doesn’t trash Wladimir Klitschko

This stood out to me.

Wladimir Klitschko is the father of Hayden’s daughter. Obviously, their relationship didn’t work out, and their daughter eventually lived primarily with him.

But Hayden does not spend this memoir tearing him apart. I didn’t finish those chapters thinking she hated him. The way she talks about him is very different from the way she talks about Brian.

It felt more like their circumstances were incredibly difficult. Hayden was struggling. He had his life in Europe and Ukraine. There was a lot going on.

But I didn’t walk away thinking, “Okay, he’s the villain.” And that contrast makes the Brian chapters stand out even more.

If you watched Nashville, you need to hear this part

I LOVED Nashville. Loved it.

Hayden played Juliette Barnes, and one of the wildest things in this memoir is hearing just how much Juliette’s storyline sometimes started to parallel Hayden’s actual life.

There were moments where the fictional character was struggling with something while Hayden herself was dealing with similar problems.

If you haven’t watched Nashville, I highly recommend it. And if you have watched it, the memoir adds a whole other layer to Hayden’s performance.

I never watched Heroes, so I can’t pretend I have some big personal connection to that show. But my kids had watched Remember the Titans the day before Hayden died.

That movie is a classic. And seeing her as this little girl in that movie, then knowing everything she would go through later, is incredibly sad.

So what did I think of the actual book?

I thought it was really good. But it is heavy.

Hayden is incredibly candid. She doesn’t make herself look perfect. She doesn’t clean up the addiction story and turn it into this neat inspirational ending.

She admits when she made bad decisions. She talks about shame, abuse, motherhood, Hollywood, her family, her relationships, and her addiction. And you really do feel like you are hearing Hayden’s version of Hayden instead of some tabloid version of her.

The difficult part now is that the whole book feels different because of what happened afterward.

Listen to the audiobook

If you’re going to read this book, I really recommend listening to it instead.

Hayden narrates it herself, and I already thought that was the best way to experience it before she died. Now I feel that even more strongly.

You hear where she laughs. You hear when she gets angry. You can hear when certain things are harder for her to talk about.

I finished this book before Hayden died. And what keeps sticking with me is how many times throughout her life she needed help.

• As a child.
• As a new mother dealing with postpartum depression.
• During addiction.
• During an abusive relationship.
• After losing her brother.

And she did ask for help. She went to treatment. She spoke publicly. She told people what she was dealing with. She wrote an entire memoir about it.

And somehow, she still ended up back around people and situations that, in my opinion, were terrible for her.

That is what I find so sad about this story.

I wish I were talking about this book 20 years from now. I wish Hayden were still here and this memoir was simply the story of everything she had survived. I wish she had another 40 or 50 years ahead of her.

But I am glad she got to tell her story herself. And if you’re going to experience it, listen to Hayden tell it in her own voice.

If you’ve read or listened to This Is Me: A Reckoning, what part of Hayden’s story surprised you the most? And what do you know her from most: Nashville, Heroes, Remember the Titans, or something else?